


Just a Game

by glitterburn (orphan_account)



Category: Mou gaan dou | Infernal Affairs Trilogy (2002 2003 2003)
Genre: Community: help_japan, Gen, write for relief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-21
Updated: 2011-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-17 04:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/glitterburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s all just a game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just a Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mumblemutter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblemutter/gifts).



“The thing you have to remember is that it’s all a game.” Wong holds his gaze; wags a finger. “Pretend it’s nothing. Pretend it doesn’t matter. The only person you should care about is me.”

Yan laughs. “Not myself?”

“No.” Wong shakes his head slowly. “The last person you should care about is yourself. Throughout all of this, you’re not you. You’re someone else. Only I know who you are.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” Wong speaks with such absolute certainty that Yan doesn’t think to challenge him.

“Pretend it’s not real,” Wong continues. “Just a game.”

This time when he laughs, Yan hears bitterness. “Easy for you to say.”

Wong smiles, but his expression is pained. “Easy. Yes. It’s easy.”

*

The day before he turns twenty, he meets Wong in Victoria Park. Yan is over-cautious, checking for a tail, shying away from shadows. He sees threats everywhere. Everyone is watching him, even when they’re not.

“Calm down,” Wong says from behind his newspaper when Yan sits next to him on a bench. “You agreed to this for three years. Continue like that and it’ll be over after three months.”

Yan can’t help it. His gaze flits from side to side. His body is tense with the urge to flee. He’s aware of the knife folded into his pocket, of the dried blood encrusted between the rivets.

Wong is unhurried, leisurely, just a man in a park reading a newspaper. “Got anything for me?”

Trying to act natural, Yan leans forward and reties his shoelaces. Bent over, he presents a smaller target. He’s memorised a bunch of stuff related to stolen cars. It rattles out of him so fast he doesn’t even draw breath.

“Calm down,” Wong says again.

“I stabbed someone.” Yan offers out the admission, half hoping for an arrest. “In a bar fight. No one called the cops.”

Wong sighs. “Shame. You could do with a few more charges on your record.” He rustles the paper together, folds it into four, and tucks it under his arm. He stands and stretches. “Let’s walk.”

Yan remains slouched on the bench. “I don’t want to walk.”

“Walking is good for you.” Wong takes a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and puts them on. “Come on. No one followed you. No one’s watching you.”

Yan relaxes a little. “How do you know?”

“By observation. Watching without giving the illusion of watching.” Wong takes the newspaper from beneath his arm and tosses it into a rubbish bin as they walk. “Relaxing without ever dropping your guard. These things can be learned. You’re young. The young are suspicious and jumpy. Just make sure you’re suspicious of the right people. And don’t jump. Not at anything.”

Further on, two elderly men are sitting at a table, canisters of tea at their sides, a pack of cigarettes in front of them. They’re playing chess, Red’s cannons and elephants circling ever closer to Black’s general. Wong pauses for a moment to watch. Yan stops beside him.

“Do you play?”

Yan shakes his head. “It’s a game for old men.”

Wong makes an amused sound. “Only old men have the maturity and patience to see a game like that through to the end.”

“You must play a lot of chess.”

“Me?” Wong looks over the top of his sunglasses. His expression is halfway between pleased and rueful. “I’m not that old.”

“Then what do you play?”

“Mah-jong.”

“Everyone plays mah-jong.” Yan is disappointed. “Everyone except me.”

“You should play,” Wong says, walking on and leaving the chess match behind. “It’ll help you fit in more.”

“What if I don’t want to fit in?” Yan doesn’t want to move. He stays where he is. “I’m not one of them. Not really.”

Wong turns. The sunglasses blank out his eyes. “Pretend. It’s just a game.”

*

After four years, Yan is more than proficient at chess but he still dislikes mah-jong. He tells himself it’s just a game. Even when he loses money, it’s just a game. Same with everything else he has to do. Cause a fight. Steal a car. Beat up a cop. Test the cocaine. Break a guy’s legs. Shoot someone. Shoot lots of people. No problem. It’s a game. Just a game.

He doesn’t believe it now any more than he believed it then, but it’s the mantra Wong gave him, and the thing with mantras is that if you repeat them for long enough, you’ll believe it.

Four years.

Yan wonders when the mantra will work. He keeps trying it.

*

There’s a dead cat on the roof.

Yan almost stumbles over it when he shoves his way through the emergency exit and strides out onto the rooftop. He’s early for their meeting, had guessed at the time since he doesn’t have a watch, and now he’s here alone with a dead cat.

It looks desiccated. He crouches beside it, tempted to poke it, but he doesn’t want to touch it, not even with the gun he’s got tucked inside his waistband. He glances around the rooftop, but the cat is the only thing to be seen across the expanse of concrete grey.

He gets up and walks around. On the other side of the road, a digital clock is displayed on the side of an office block. Yan watches the neon numbers change. Wong arrives thirty-two seconds late for their appointment.

“A dead cat,” Yan says, gesturing towards it.

Wong looks at the animal without comment.

“Wonder how it got up here,” Yan continues.

“Does it matter?” Wong asks. There’s something in his voice, a hint of concern, that suggestion of paternalism that drives Yan crazy.

“I don’t know.” Yan shrugs, turns away from Wong. Stares at the cat. There’s a collar around its neck. “It has a tag. It’s someone’s pet. It matters to someone.”

Wong draws in a breath. “What do you want to do—pick it up and take it with you? Call round to the address on the tag and say ‘Sorry for bothering you but here’s your cat, I found it on a roof’?”

Yan scuffs at the concrete dust and stares at the cat. It has no eyes, only empty sockets. He imagines wrapping the little corpse in his leather jacket and delivering the pathetic bundle to its owner. Better that the owner remains ignorant of the cat’s fate. Better they pretend that the cat ran off to another home where it’s fed and petted and cherished. He clears his throat. “It’d probably fall apart if I picked it up.”

“Probably.”

Wong walks away, footsteps loud and slow over the concrete. A moment later Yan hears the snick of a lighter. He turns his back on the cat and follows Wong to the edge of the roof.

“I like it here,” Wong says. He’s relaxed, smoking a cigarette, collar loosened, shirttails bunched over his belt, tie flapping in the breeze. The light bounces from the silver rims of his sunglasses. He gestures with the cigarette. “Look at the view.”

Yan leans his forearms against the concrete parapet and looks straight down at the street forty floors below. “Yeah.”

“There’s a reason we meet on rooftops.”

“Safety.” Yan knows this. It’s so much easier to spot a tail forty floors up on a flat roof than it is at street level. Up here, the sunlight is merciless. Nothing can hide. No one comes out onto a rooftop for fun. Not this kind of rooftop, anyway. Elsewhere in the city there’s rooftops with gardens, rooftops with swimming pools, rooftops with driving ranges. But not here. Here rooftops are rain-washed and sun-baked, sometimes unfinished with iron rivets bleeding rust down the walls, sometimes with cables rolled up and forgotten.

“Two reasons we meet on rooftops,” Wong amends with a smile. “Safety, privacy—that’s one. There’s another reason.”

Yan shakes his head. “Closer to heaven. Further from hell.” He points down at the traffic far below them. “I like the distance. The street is down there. I’m up here. Separation. It’s good to be reminded of it.”

Wong takes off his sunglasses and gives Yan a serious, intent look. “The sessions with Dr Lee are doing you some good, then.”

“You could say that.” Yan keeps his tone neutral. No point in saying that he can unpack his emotions all by himself. He’s been dealing with his own shit for ten years; stupid to think a shrink would be able to give him answers after a couple of months. At least Dr Lee is easy on the eye. More than that, she doesn’t hassle him. She lets him sleep. Maybe she thinks he thinks it’s all a game. He’s never once been serious with her, so how can she even begin to help him?

Yan exhales. The sun is hot through his leather jacket. It burns through his hair. He turns his head to look at Wong. “So why do we meet on rooftops?”

Wong flicks away the butt of his cigarette. It rolls across the roof scattering ash, the tip winking orange. “I like the view.”

“The view.” Yan straightens his arms, lifts himself away from the parapet.

“It reminds me I’m not just a cop.” Wong gazes out across the water towards Kowloon. “It reminds me there’s more to all this. It reminds me that I’m me.”

Yan snorts. He straightens up and goes to stand beside Wong. The sun levels directly into his eyes. He puts up a hand for shade, but doesn’t relax the muscles in his face. He keeps squinting, looking beyond the dazzled reflections from glass-fronted buildings, looking past the glitter of the sea in Causeway Bay. There’s a haze, heat and pollution, and he looks through it, looks at the horizon, but sees nothing out there.


End file.
